Park's Quest by Catherine Paterson

“What most text books miss is that all wars-even those that are broadly supported and are fought victoriously for noble ends-permanently change the people and societies that engage in them.”
-Allan Goodman

Park’s Quest, by Katherine Patterson, tells the story of Park (the 5th) trying to learn all he can of his father who was killed in the Vietnam War some ten years before. To him, his father seemed a great hero that no one could help but admire, but through the course of his journey he found out just how normal and flawed he was. His mother refused to talk about him and this just made him all the more mysterious and perfect. The war did not directly affect Park but it killed his father and had become his life.
Randy, Park’s mother, got extremely choked up when someone so much as mentioned the war and he did not understand. He could not have even begun to imagine the pain Randy had been and still was feeling and a...